


Remapping the Controls

by unfolded73



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M, Post-Coital Cuddling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-05
Updated: 2016-11-05
Packaged: 2018-08-29 06:38:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8479078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unfolded73/pseuds/unfolded73
Summary: Post 6x06 "Dark Waters", the Captain Cobra Swan family work on their developing family dynamics.





	

She found Henry lying on his bed, earbuds in his ears and a comic book open in front of his face, although he had the look of someone who wasn’t really seeing what was on the page in front of him.

“Hey, kid,” she said from the doorway. “Everything okay?”

He took his earbuds out and set his phone and the comic book aside on the bedside table. “Yeah, I’m just tired.” She got the impression he wanted to say more, but wasn’t sure how to.

Emma flopped down next to him on the bed. “Mind if I hang out for a while?”

“Where’s Killian?”

“Making dinner.”

Henry wrinkled his nose. “It’s not gonna be mackerel, is it?”

“Uh, I don’t think so. Why?”

“Don’t worry about it.” Henry was frowning, and Emma watched and patiently waited as he struggled with what he wanted to say. “Before, I said some stuff to him that…” He took another long pause. “This is harder than I thought it would be.”

“What is?”

Henry’s mouth pinched, and he looked ashamed. “Sharing a home with your… you know. Boyfriend or whatever.”

Emma sat up. “Oh, God, Henry, I should’ve… I mean, I didn’t ask because I thought you were already on board—”

“Yeah, I know, and I was. I mean, I am. Why would you ask, when he and I picked this house out specifically for us to live in together?”

Emma felt a stab of anxiety in her gut; if Henry didn’t want Killian living here, she didn’t know what she would do. “But you’re having second thoughts?”

“No, not really. You’re both happy, and even if I didn’t want him here, I wouldn’t mess that up. And it’s not even that I don’t want him here, it’s just… different. Growing up with mom — Regina, it was always just the two of us. And the same with you and me. But I mean, we were also with Grandma and Grandpa, so I think I imagined adding Hook to our extremely complicated family wouldn’t be that big a deal.” He sat up and grabbed his phone, turning it over and over in his hands, obviously agitated. “But it _is_ a big deal, because I never lived with my dad, and now it’s like… I don’t know. It’s weird between us. I’ve known Hook since you were still mostly giving him the cold shoulder, and I feel like I know him pretty well, so why is it suddenly so weird?”

Emma took all of Henry’s rambling in, absorbing all of the twists and turns of his speech as he worked through his feelings out loud. “Because before he was just your friend, and now there are all these expectations of what you two should be to each other. He doesn’t want you to feel like he’s trying to replace your dad, but I think he does want to be something more in your life.” She thought back to how she’d seen Killian interact with her son since the Underworld. “I think he’s terrified of messing things up with you.”

Henry looked a little bit stricken. “And then I totally confirmed his fears by saying he wasn’t a part of our family, but then he sacrificed himself for me anyway…”

Emma eyed him up and down. “How much danger were you in, exactly?”

Henry looked guilty, gaze cutting away from her. “Not that much,” he tried, but when she narrowed her eyes, he quickly relented. “I don’t know how much danger we were _actually_ in, but Killian definitely thought Liam was going to kill us both.”

“And he sacrificed himself how?”

“Don’t be mad at him.”

She crossed her arms. “Sacrificed himself how?”

“There was only one diving suit, so he put me in it and sent me through the hatch to get away.”

“And let me guess; you went back for him.”

“Do you really think, after everything we went through to get him back, that I would just let him die _again_?” To Henry, his logic was clearly unassailable.

“I should be furious with you right now.”

“Yeah, probably.”

She pulled him into a fierce hug. “You need to let us protect you. That’s the way this is supposed to work.” Emma took Henry’s face in her hands and gave him a hard look. “ _We_ protect _you_ , not the other way around.”

“Okay, Mom,” he answered, but she could see the defiance in his eyes. If he had it to do all over again, he would do the same thing. She supposed he wouldn’t be her son without that stubborn streak.

 

~~*~~

 

Once Emma had finished cleaning up the kitchen from dinner, she found Henry and Killian together in front of the television. Killian had an Xbox remote wedged between his knees, and was doing his best to use his one hand to operate the buttons and paddles on top while the tip of his hook was poised over one of the triggers.

Henry was patiently teaching Killian to move his character around a virtual town square, and was kindly not laughing at the fact that Killian’s little man was currently running against a brick wall, perpetual motion going nowhere.

“Turn… here, press that one,” Henry said, indicating the correct paddle. Killian’s little avatar finally stopped his losing battle with the wall and veered off unsteadily down the cobblestoned street on the screen.

Killian was already looking a bit bored, but he soldiered on, and the way he was making such an effort to be interested in the things that Henry was interested in made Emma’s heart seize in her chest.

“I’m gonna do some research and see if there’s a way to remap the controls for someone who’s lost a hand,” Henry said. “Or maybe there’s a special controller we can buy. Would that be okay, Mom?”

She winked at Killian. “Sure, that would be okay.”

Leaving them to their game, Emma listened happily to the rumble of their voices as she moved around the house, straightening up a bit before going upstairs and treating herself to a bath, a luxury she rarely had time for. It felt so good, being in her home together with them, like all the puzzle pieces of her life had finally slotted into place, and she wished, not for the first time, for a pause button.

 

~~*~~

 

His lips brushed her bare shoulder, just the slightest pressure of his mouth as he curled against her back. Their breathing was still slowing, returning to normal. Emma swallowed on a dry throat, parched from so many gasping breaths and barely articulated moans, and debated whether it was worth it to get up for a glass of water and to clean herself up. She’d just wake up sticky and uncomfortable later if she didn’t, but Killian’s embrace was wonderfully comfortable, and she felt sleep tugging her down.

“I like seeing you and Henry together,” she murmured, her voice a little slurred with pleasure and drowsiness. “It’s nice, my two men looking after each other.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” Killian sighed.

Emma rolled over under his arm, her hand coming up to stroke his stubbled cheek. “I know you tried to sacrifice yourself to save my son, sending him out of that submarine in the only diving helmet. And I know he refused to go, and came back and saved your sorry ass.” Off his surprised look, she added, “Henry told me everything.”

“I’ll never not put his life before my own.”

“I know, and it’s … God, what did I do to deserve you?”

His eyes glanced down as he shook his head. “Don’t give me so much credit, Swan, he wouldn’t have been in danger in the first place if it weren’t for my mistakes, past and present.” He looked up and met her eyes again. “What I realized today is how easy it was, how easy it would have been no matter the circumstances, making that choice. He’s your son, and I’m starting to see him…”

Emma held her breath, waiting for him to continue. “What?” she finally asked.

“I know I’ll never replace Bae in his eyes, nor would I want to, but… I do hope that someday he comes to see me as a sort of father figure.”

“I’m pretty sure he already does, Killian.”

He barreled on, not registering her statement. “Because I care for him as… as if he were my own son, and if he’ll allow it I’d like to be a father to him, unworthy of the title though I certainly am.”

Emma wrapped an arm over Killian’s shoulders and pulled herself as close to him as she could, burying her face in his shoulder and breathing him in as tears pressed behind her eyes. She shouldn’t have been surprised by this admission; Killian had always looked out for Henry, trying his best to protect him from Zelena and supporting him in Camelot while she was fighting the darkness. She’d never needed to tell him that she and Henry were a package deal because he’d always understood it, from the moment he took her to Neverland to save her son.

That feeling washed over her again, the feeling of _home_ , and she gasped at how overwhelming it felt. “I want that for both of you. I want us to be a family.”

Killian clung as tightly to her as she was clinging to him. “Me too.”

A thought occurred to her and she pulled away to look at him again. “Killian, if my visions come true, if I die—”

“Swan—”

“Just listen, I need to say this. If I die, it’s important to me that you stay a part of his life. You could continue to live here with him—”

“He has Regina, love—”

“Yeah, but who knows what’s going to happen with the Evil Queen? He could lose us both. And even if Regina turns out okay, it doesn’t mean in my absence you should stop being in his life. If anything, he’ll need you more than ever.” She started to panic at the idea that Regina might not honor that arrangement if the unthinkable happened. “We should talk to Regina, make sure she understands how important it is to me that after, I mean _if_ I…”

Killian stroked her hair in a soothing gesture. “We’ll talk to her, but you aren’t going to die. I swear it, Emma.”

She could almost believe him.


End file.
